‘Who owns my life?’
How Sue Rodriguez helped change the way Canadians think
On Monday, it will be 20 years since the Supreme Court of Canada told Sue Rodriguez she had no legal right to take her own life. After being diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, in 1991, the Victoria woman made national headlines and captured the public’s attention by asking a simple question.
“If I cannot give consent to my own death, whose body is this? Who owns my life?”
Rodriguez wanted a choice. She said the time and manner of her death shouldn’t be decided by her disease or the law. If she were incapable of taking her own life, she insisted it should be legal for a doctor to provide her with the means to do so.
But the Supreme Court did not agree, and the precedent it set has left the issue of whether doctor-assisted suicide should be legalized dormant for most of the last two decades.
Now, once again, the issue is making its way through Canada’s court system, and once again, it appears the Supreme Court will be forced to grapple with the simple question Rodriguez asked 20 years ago. “Who owns my life?” Her legacy may be tied to the answer of that question, but according to Chris Considine, who was Rodriguez’s lawyer, it is not defined by it. The memory of her that is burned into his mind is of a woman who inspired hope.
It was early March in 1993, five months before the Supreme Court decision, and Rodriguez was in her wheelchair. She was surrounded by reporters and photographers at a hotel press conference in Victoria. As she answered questions, her left arm was contorted out of shape. The words rolled off her tongue like an out-of-tune guitar.
She was 42 years old and had been living with ALS for two years.
When the press conference ended, Rodriguez, accompanied by Considine, left the hotel.
“Traffic stopped,” Considine said. “Pedestrians stopped. And they started clapping for her, just spontaneously, and the echo of the applause along the street was extraordinary.”
Hours earlier, Rodriguez had been at the B.C. Court of Appeal where she had lost, in a 2-1 decision, her appeal to have assisted suicide decriminalized. Rodriguez and Considine had argued the criminalization of assisted suicide violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
“When we went into it, we thought the chances of being successful were less than 50 per cent,” says Considine. “It was one of those moments as a lawyer where you take a big gulp and say, ‘I’m going to try this and just see what happens.’ ”
Though the appeal had been dismissed, on that day in March, outside of a small hotel and surrounded by strangers, Considine says he was inspired by what he witnessed. As he and Rodriguez listened to the applause, it was as if they had found a still point in the turning world.
“It seemed as if time stopped,” says Considine. “It was an extraordinary moment, realizing how much people cared about what Sue Rodriguez had done.
“And it was clear from the polling that well over 60 per cent of the population understood the issue and felt (assisted suicide) was appropriate with the right safeguards.”
By the time their case made it to the Supreme Court in September, Rodriguez had been given less than a year to live.
Rodriguez and Considine lost their case in a 5-4 decision.
Though her case failed to change the law, Considine says it was still a major victory. “She helped changed the way people think about the options for terminal illness.”
During her court proceedings, Rodriguez became close friends with Svend Robinson, an MP from Burnaby, B.C., who became a champion of her cause. Four months after the Supreme Court’s decision, Robinson enlisted the help of an anonymous doctor so Rodriguez could defy the law and take her own life, on her own terms. Rodriguez had asked her family members to leave the house when the moment came, but Robinson remained with her.
“I was more nervous than she was, and she calmed me. I was in tears and felt so helpless, but also so inspired by her great courage,” Robinson says in a forthcoming biography of his life.
A criminal investigation was conducted after her death, but no charges were ever laid.
Prior to Rodriguez’s death, Switzerland was the only democratic country in the world where assisted suicide was legal, a factor that proved to be a roadblock in her Supreme Court case.
And as assisted-suicide laws evolve outside of Canada, Rodriguez’s case sets a difficult precedent to overcome.
“The Supreme Court of Canada, reading between the lines, thought the issue should be dealt with by Parliament,” says Considine.
But according to John Warren, vice-president of the non-profit organization Dying with Dignity, because assisted suicide is a divisive issue — and one vehemently opposed by religious groups — politicians have not seen a benefit of pushing it into the spotlight.
“I think it’s entirely due to a lack of political will from the politicians,” he says. The lack of political action hasn’t gone unnoticed by members of the medical community.
Earlier this week, Dr. Donald Low, a prominent Toronto doctor who was the public face of the SARS crisis in 2003, released a heartfelt video pleading for reforms to assisted-suicide laws.
“Live in my body for 24 hours … I’m just frustrated not being able to have control of my own life, not being able to make the decision for myself when enough is enough,” Low says in the video, recorded eight days before his death from a brain tumour last week.
The powerful video spurred Ontario Health Minister Deb Matthews to say it’s time Canadians and their leaders talk about the issue, and that she expected it would be raised next week when provincial, federal and territorial health ministers meet in Toronto.
“I think it’s about the community having the conversation, I think it’s about people having the conversation,” she said this week.
But federal Justice Minister Peter MacKay quickly closed the door on any conversation, saying the Conservative government had “no desire to reintroduce legislation that would open this issue up.”
So with any hope of reform in the hands of a reluctant House of Commons, a push to change the law nationally has been renewed in the courts, and once again, the battle is being fought in B.C.
“There really has been a profound switch in recent years in social thinking on these issues,” says Grace Pastine, litigation director for the B.C. Civil Liberties Association.
Last year, Pastine’s legal team represented Gloria Taylor, a B.C. women suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease, who, like Rodriguez, wanted the right to choose a doctor-assisted suicide.
Last June, the B.C. Supreme Court found that denying Taylor an assisted suicide violated her charter rights.
The court awarded Taylor an immediate exemption from the law, and gave Parliament one year to consider and draft new legislation.
“We learned a lot from the Sue Rodriguez case,” says Pastine. “In her case, most of the evidence that was before the court was evidence of Rodriguez herself, of her illness and of her wish to have a physician assisted death.”
Pastine says her team approached the case differently. They assembled a “momentous record” of first-hand accounts from incurably ill Canadians, and amassed a substantial record of expert evidence from around the world — evidence that didn’t exist in 1993. The court took notice. “The evidence shows that risks exist, but that they can be very largely avoided through carefully-designed, well-monitored safeguards,” wrote B.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Lynn Smith in her ruling.
Though victorious, Taylor never used her exemption. She died in October, unexpectedly, from an infection in her colon. She was 64.
In March, the federal government appealed the ruling made by the B.C. Supreme Court. The B.C. Court of Appeal has yet to pass judgment.
Now, 20 years since Rodriguez fell one vote short, Pastine says she expects the issue to come full circle, and return to the Supreme Court, regardless of the appeal court’s decision. And even though Taylor has died, Pastine says her organization is committed to seeing this case through to the end.